


Trade Your Lilies for Apple Blossoms

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: (no actual violence just nightmare violence), Cuddling & Snuggling, Fluff, Holding Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Kisses, M/M, Nightmares, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29913645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: Rhosyn wakes up with Bastien at his side, and life goes on.
Relationships: Rhosyn/Bastien Vildenvert
Comments: 15
Kudos: 50
Collections: The Witcher Flash Fiction Challenge #017





	Trade Your Lilies for Apple Blossoms

**Author's Note:**

> Rhosyn and Bastien are (as you know, of course) from the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt quest "Missing in Action" and this story carries on from the best ending of that quest. If you do this path on the quest, you can visit their farm east of the village afterward and see them there. Rhosyn is still limping, but safe, and the trees, like most trees in White Orchard, are always blooming.
> 
> Violence warning and M rating are both for a nightmare (and their backstory), not anything that happens for real at the time of this story.

The battlefield was churning, howling chaos--Rhosyn scarcely knew which direction they were meant to be fighting toward anymore. He only knew that he must fight whoever tried to impede him. Whoever's tabard or shield showed the Lilies. 

A figure surged toward him, blue over his armor, the Lilies a white blur below green eyes and a pale head. Bastien. He'd lost his helmet--he was already wounded, he had to get off the field, he wasn't safe--and Rhosyn, still wearing black, still holding his shield emblazoned with the golden sun, was already swinging his sword. He felt the horribly familiar impact, the give of flesh and bone, saw blood spray and those bright green eyes go dim, and he let his momentum carry him. His shield smashed Bastien into the muck under them, and Rhosyn lay over his victim, staring in horror, and knew that this meant that he would die as surely as Bastien. 

He could feel, already, the horrible twist of his leg that meant he wouldn't be able to run, or fight. And he had killed Bastien-- _Bastien_ \--so there would be no one to help him, and he would be all alone here, in this hostile land full of monsters and men worse than monsters. He couldn't breathe for the horror of it, knowing what his fate would be, knowing he deserved no less. He couldn't even look away from Bastien's face as it drained to clay, his staring eyes with no light left in them. He wanted to weep, to scream, but he couldn't make a sound.

Someone grabbed his hand and squeezed it, hard, and Rhosyn opened his eyes.

The room was dim, but there was enough light for him to know the shape of Bastien beside him. His own hand tightened on Bastien's, and he raised the other to touch tentatively at Bastien's temple, cheek, throat--all whole. 

A nightmare, that was all. 

Bastien tugged at his shoulder while keeping their hands clasped between them, drawing Rhosyn to turn on his side, curling in toward him as Bastien did the same. Rhosyn's bad leg moved only stiffly, but he _could_ move, could roll onto his side, could cling to Bastien's hand and feel the pulse beating in his throat. Bastien's hand was still tight on his shoulder--where Rhosyn could never have felt it when he still wore his armor, as he had for those endless days while they waited to be found or die of their wounds.

As he did in all his nightmares, whether he dreamt of the battlefield or after. Bastien falling under his sword, or Bastien dying and leaving him alone in that hut, or Bastien leaving him behind to die, carried away by his brother who had no use for a crippled Nilfgaardian deserter.

But none of that had happened. Rhosyn was here, sharing this bed with Bastien, and when his own rough breathing settled he could hear Bastien breathing in the night-quiet of the cottage. Beyond him he could hear the dog--who had found them, who had led Dune and that witcher to them, who Rhosyn had recognized right away from the stories Bastien had told him--snuffling in his place by the door. He could hear the little sounds of Bastien's brother and sister-in-law, Dune and Liesje, sleeping on the other side of the thin partition that made that end of the cottage a more or less private bedroom for the married couple.

Rhosyn and Bastien needed no such privacy, of course; they only shared a bed because there was only one other bed in the little cottage, and no room for another even if they fashioned one. Rhosyn never touched Bastien except like this, in the night, when waking from a nightmare--or when Bastien had a nightmare of his own, and needed the same reassurance he offered Rhosyn tonight. 

Bastien usually touched Rhosyn's mouth and the nape of his neck, and then shifted to touch his hip and, very gently, his bad leg. Rhosyn tried not to picture what visions Bastien was pushing away with those light touches, and hoped devoutly that Bastien didn't realize what Rhosyn did in his own dreams.

Neither of them spoke, in these broken midnight hours. They had spoken to each other so much, in the first days they'd known each other. Talked and talked and never said anything important, never spoke of what could happen, what would likely happen, or what it meant, the growing fierce loyalty they felt between them.

Definitely, they never spoke of the ways each of them looked at the other sometimes, the deep and futile physical awareness of each other. They had dragged themselves to sit against different walls--so that at least one of them would have a chance of surviving, if found by his own side--and never moved closer. Never touched. They only talked, and talked, and talked, day and night and day and night again.

So for this they were silent, and the truth of it was here in their breath, their bodies, their hands. They were here, in a bed, on the farm that belonged to Bastien and Dune, only a couple of miles from the battlefield but untouched and serene. They were in clean clothes under the blanket they shared, and their wounds were mostly healed.

They were safe. Rhosyn had been named as Rodrick, a cousin from some other village that had been nearly wiped out by disease, which had left Rodrick half lame and a bit slow-witted. He never spoke to anyone outside this house but in a low mumble of a word or two, though Bastien made him practice speaking with a Nordling accent whenever they were alone together in the daylight.

At night there was no need to watch his words.

Rhosyn was just starting to feel calm and easy, as if he might be able to go back to sleep without falling straight back onto that battlefield, when he realized there was light leaking through the shutters. Dawn was near, and the work of the farm would be starting up soon.

In the gradually brightening light, he saw Bastien glance toward the shutters. Rhosyn saw the first hint of green reappear in Bastien's eyes as the grayness of the night became touched with color. It was like watching Bastien come alive again, and Rhosyn could have lain and stared at his face, his bright eyes, till the sun was full up and Dune rousted them out of bed to contribute what they could to the morning chores.

But well before the light of true sunrise was showing, Bastien smiled and gave a tug on their joined hands, sliding out of bed altogether.

Rhosyn followed him, of course. He would never willingly stay behind when he had the chance to be at Bastien's side.

Hussar stirred as soon as Bastien's feet were on the floor, thumping his tail, but he made no sound, only followed them out into the cool, dewy almost-morning. The dog trotted away, sniffing, and Rhosyn looked up. The sky to the east was lightening, but there were still stars in the sky overhead.

Bastien tugged at his hand again after they'd stood there for a moment, breathing the clear air and adjusting to the coolness. He kept his pace slow, so that Rhosyn's limp didn't leave him behind--he had always done it, from the time they were both on their feet again, and every day when they went out into the fields or foraging in the woods. 

For now they only went across the dirt track that led from the road to the house. Three apple trees grew over there, and for now they were covered in white blossoms that seemed to catch all the little light there was in the sky, almost glowing in the dimness. There was a bench under the farthest tree, on the side away from the road and the house--as private a place as the two of them were likely to reach, especially barefoot and half-dressed.

Even after they'd settled on the bench--Rhosyn with his bad leg stretched out--their hands stayed clasped between them, and they stayed quiet. Rhosyn watched Bastien's pale skin gain its lively pink tint, and the green of his eyes brighten to its true bright spring leaf color.

Just when a line of light blazed into view at the horizon, ahead of the disc of the sun, Bastien let go of Rhosyn's hand to settle his hand on Rhosyn's good thigh. 

There was no mistaking his meaning--not after the last weeks of seeing, knowing, touching, but never pushing farther. Not here, sheltered from view and safe in the quiet of the early dawn. 

Bastien leaned into him, and felt Bastien mirroring the movement as he closed his eyes, tipping their foreheads gently together. It felt right. It felt like something they'd been making their slow, limping way toward ever since they found each other on the battlefield.

Still, Rhosyn cleared his throat and said, carefully quietly. "If someone should see--" Bastien shook his head, denying the possibility, but Rhosyn had to say it, little as he wanted to discourage this. "What kind of cousin would they think me?"

Bastien laughed softly, and Rhosyn could feel his breath. "That's what surprises you? Surely you know we Nordlings are always up for a cousin."

Rhosyn snorted, and shoved his shoulder against Bastien's, but didn't draw away. Didn't open his eyes. Bastien's hand on his thigh came up to rest flat against his belly.

"I think I was about fifteen," Bastien said. "The first time Dune told me that if I ever wanted to bring another lad, a good friend, to live on the farm and help me work my half, he wouldn't mind it."

That did make Rhosyn jerk back; from all he'd ever heard, and all he'd perceived in the last few weeks, that was unusually broadminded, for a Nordling. If Bastien meant what Rhosyn thought he did, but the warmth in his eyes and the crook of his smile made that very clear. 

Well, Dune had been willing to bring home a half-crippled Nilfgaardian deserter for his brother. Rhosyn supposed it might have been because he'd already had some practice in accepting Bastien's choice of companions.

"So he won't mind if our cousin shares my bed either," Bastien murmured.

It was far from a grand declaration; it was the guarded statement of a man who knew how disastrously wrong this could go, how thoroughly both their lives could be destroyed if they acted from mere passion. Bastien hadn't said anything before now--before Rhosyn was walking fairly easily, and they'd had nearly a month to settle in together and get accustomed to each other, to the farm, to living in close quarters with Dune and Liesje. Until waking together after a nightmare had become as familiar as every other part of their life here.

Rhosyn pictured what Bastien was, in so many words, offering: sharing a bed every night, and being here every morning, to see the apple blossoms fall, to see the apples ripen, to gather them in and eat their way through the store of them all through the long Northern winters they'd all been telling Rhosyn about. Rhosyn would always be called Rodrick by the neighbors, always referred to as a cousin--but maybe the kind of cousin where no one bothered to ask which side of the family he was from, or how distant a relation.

Here, in this quiet village, on this peaceful farm, they could have that much. They could have each other, and not give up the rest.

Rhosyn felt the first warmth of true dawn strike his cheek, and opened his eyes to see the daylight caress Bastien's temple, cheek, throat, all the places where the skin was whole, because his nightmare had been only a nightmare. It seemed intolerable, then, that the Great Sun should kiss Bastien so while Rhosyn did not.

He pressed his lips to each spot slowly, carefully, and felt as much as heard Bastien's indrawn breath. Then Bastien's hand was on his jaw, drawing him into place, and Bastien's lips found his.

Rhosyn did not know how to say _yes_ enough to match what Bastien offered him, but perhaps he didn't need to speak at all. Every kiss and every touch said what needed saying between them, and when they were both out of breath--still gaining back strength, and maybe a little taken aback at their own daring--they leaned together against the rough bark of the apple tree and looked at each other, in daylight, under the soft canopy of the apple blossoms.

They stayed that way, smiling at each other like children, holding hands as if someone might wrench them apart, until the door banged open and Dune shouted for them. Another day was beginning, and they met it together.


End file.
